Beautiful Misery
by GoTunks
Summary: One by one each of her friends are disappearing, leaving her last in a sea of doubt. Why is this happening and is she the next on the list? (no pairings) Minako's story and 4th in the series.


Here's the fourth installment or part three of the Tragic Anthology. It doesn't matter what order you read the four stories in but I would suggest saving this one for last as it reveals some of the hidden clues in the others but it's truly up to you.  
  
The four stories of the tragic anthology are "Genius by Design", "Glaiven Retribution", "Electric Tide", and this installment, "Beautiful Misery". That is the order they were posted in and the order I would suggest they be read in. But this story can be read on it's own without leaving out details from the other stories.  
  
There may be a future chapter that will bring one last conclusion to this series. It will be called, "Crimson Serenade."  
  
This is angst, enjoy, and I claim nothing so there's nothing to disclaim.  
  
**************************************************************************** **********  
  
Beautiful Misery  
  
*************  
  
The clouds are thick and melancholy as the rains pelt me from above. This is where my world has gone. You wouldn't think this was a colony, the way they make it rain to mourn. Mourn is what they continue to do and two months have already passed. The dirt swirled by the wasted water and reverting it to mud. I've come, I must tell you both how the world has changed. Not for the better.  
  
The air is cool and I can see my breath, I'm sure my lips are blue. The rain slaps my back and trails over my face, raw by the tears that are just starting to end. The drops from above sting my eyes as I sit on the soaked ground, my knees pulled to my chest. My once lustrous hair that you both complimented me on is matted down by water and caked with mud. You said I was beautiful.  
  
I think I was lying to myself until the day I lost you both. Lost you to my own greed and naïveté at the workings of the world. The workings of a world I knew so little about. I just kept thinking that I was too blind to notice. Notice what was really going on. Between my friends, the friends I felt were family and your friends too.  
  
The ground is cool on this lonely lot of land but here I sit between two headstones. Headstones etched with your names and "Comrades at arms". I still remember the night he came to me to tell me the news. But he lied as well. Perhaps, now that I look back, he was saving me the grief. The horror that I would have felt if I had actually known what happened.  
  
What happened? I find now, something inside, pushes me to tell you what happened. It's a long story, many parts you know, and I just recently connected it all. The rain is so cold though, so forgive me, be patient for I might stutter. Stutter because telling, no living this story has worn on me.  
  
Two years and seven months to the day. The day that it started. We were so young then, or so it felt, and we aged drastically over the next few days. The day seemed so normal when we first woke but I believe that the sun had dimmed from its home in the sky. It was before I met the both of you. Do you ever notice how hind sight seems so clear? The birds hadn't sung cheerfully and the laughter of children was absent from the streets. This day marked the changing tide, the first of many saddened days.  
  
It struck us hard. A deafening blow. And each of us handled it differently, slipping from reality, we lost our grasp. All we wanted was to live on in life's confusion, not understanding why our dream never came to be. We passed from our last life to this one, the Crystal Kingdom erased from history. At first we didn't remember, no hint that part of our lives were missing, until that knock came to the door. Our Princess was dead. She was murdered, found by the youngest of our 'sisters', crucified on the wall.  
  
I'm still haunted by the hollowed look in her eyes. Her mouth half open, frozen in the midst of a scream. The way her blood soaked her night shirt and how her hair had been violently ripped from her head. The way that silver tear clung to her cheek.  
  
Then the change began. One by one we became different, each too sad to see. We kept close together though, hoping for answers, clinging to the bonds we still had. It was cold then, late in January and snow had blanketed the ground. Bitter and cold. And we barely noticed as another slipped away.  
  
I don't know who took it hardest but perhaps it was she, the guardian. The most physical and strong spirited of our unit and the pride of Jupiter. Her name was Makoto, I had no idea you would meet her later on when she decided to run away. A year and four months nearly, after we lost our princess, Makoto ran away.  
  
At the same time as this, a year before, Mercury fell into a sea of angst. Her studies fell just slightly as she desperately searched for something that e would later find out about. It said later in her letter that she was searching for some magnificent eyes. Eyes that ended up belonging to one of your friends.  
  
She searched for two long years until our two groups met minus one of yours and one of ours. Neither side knowing that they were together in the colonies. You were there, the four of you visiting from the colonies. The same colony we didn't know Makoto had gone. And Ami at last found her memorable eyes. Finding them, only to have them stray to another of our friends. Then he clouds became sad again.  
  
Sad like they are today but rain did not fall. We weren't on a colony where it can rain when ever they want. How could we have not seen the danger for our numbers? With the princess solely remembered and Makoto missing in space, the blue haired soldier of Mercury took her own life. She must have been grieving and we didn't know until we read her note, we let time sift through our fingers.  
  
The days inched by us and dulled by our tears until two weeks had passed. Two tiring weeks where the four of you had already returned home. It was six months before now and we received a letter, addressed from the Winner Corporation. Your fifth friend had met Makoto and you begged us to come right away. We didn't see what was coming to shake our very being apart.  
  
We arrived on this colony in the most dismal of moods and we sank from there. Never did we mean to take you with us. Our diminishing numbers now that three of us remain. Makoto was found in here apartment, the blood spilled from her heart and with in hours your friend Trowa followed her to her grave.  
  
In the letter she had wrote, she spoke high of you all especially of your friend who also lost his life. I try not to wonder if there's a curse on us all. Who knew that four months later, the two of you would follow with your lives. Follow a path bathed in violent blood.  
  
I pretended n to see in the following weeks, we had chose to stay in space. We stayed to support our sides, finding solace in one another's loses. It was like a game, as I said it did not exist. Succumbed by your anguish, you both began to fight. Not openly argue or show violence between one another, but a duel for my attention. Too influenced by the feeling, I led you both on as my eyes had wondered to someone else. Another of your friends.  
  
For four months I led you astray as more of my friends began to disappear. Dead or alive we didn't know. I just trapped myself in a dangerous affair and the danger grew from there. At the same time, another friend was playing her own game of misery as well. And I didn't make it stop.  
  
I didn't want it to stop. I let you continue thinking you were winning my love until the night you entered that building and Hiiro came to my door. He was a soldier, you all were, but he lied to shelter my heart. Shelter me from the gruesome truth. The truth about your deaths.  
  
A mission had arrived just days before. A mission for you to handle. You were to infiltrate a factory and record information. A simple task is what you said. Simple enough that Hiiro had no need to go in. I still ask myself how it would have been different if he'd gone instead.  
  
He came to my door that night; I could feel the emotion in the air. The senseless emotion as he told me you both were dead. He and Wufei stayed back as you two ran ahead. Ran ahead to the clutches of the last room you'd see. An explosion ripped through the complex.  
  
An explosion that left you both for dead. That is what he told me, an explosion, that the enemy knew you were coming. They had beaten you to it and set a trap instead. Those were his words but he told me not the truth. The truth about how the two of you died. The death that left you both mangled. To this day, I don't blame him for not telling me the truth.  
  
Not telling me. Not wishing to hurt me by reiterating your execution. As I later found out, an execution is what it was. Chained to the floor as you both screamed for your lives, I wonder which of you was forced to go first. Going first to death as the other was forced to watch helplessly until his turn came to die.  
  
That was two months. Two long months ago since I learned the bloody truth. That truth is why I come each day to sit between your graves. Sitting on the wet ground for hours, wondering where it went. Wondering where age went for me over the last two and a half years. AS I trace the smooth outlines of your names, we had you buried side by side along with the first of your friends to go. All of your graves saying, "Comrades at Arms".  
  
We continued to stay close though as tragedy destroyed our lives. The tragedy we tried to evade until we realized that only four of us remain. It was four until three nights ago. Over the two months since your departure, four of my friends were found but not for the better of our souls. Each sacrificed doing what they loved. Here we wept some more.  
  
Why couldn't our dream come true? Why couldn't we realize peace? All our hopes and that which we fought for. We were rewarded by being reborn in a war plagued world. A world of turmoil where so many we loved have already been forced onto the next. A horrible world that denies its citizens any shard of happiness. And our death toll has risen to eleven.  
  
Eleven are gone and three remain. Three of us as the 'Perfect Soldier' was the latest kill. Many nights when I couldn't sleep, after I knew we all were going to die, I asked the heavens who would be the next to go. Who would be the next person to perish in this tragic tide? Cal me naive but I never thought Hiiro would fall so soon. Fall with little struggle and a painful reminder of who he was as he was found early the next morning. Found beneath an overpass with a cruel hole in his chest.  
  
I wish the rain would stop, the blood spill too. I doubt I could handle the loss of my last two friends. One that I secretly held feelings for as I let you two continue your ways and my best friend who captured his heart. I'm not sure if she returns his feelings but she has comforted me through every person's death. We helped each other carry the loss. Up until now, she stands behind me, silent support as I try to halt my tears. Halt them if only for a moment so I can tell you this story that so far I have told.  
  
Four other friends we had, who you barely met, I already said the met their fate, experiencing what they loved. Haruka and her motorcycle which she always loved to ride. Michiru and her violin, that sweet music she can't continue to play. Hotaru was found in her room, her eyes and hair a ghostly white. She was so young. She didn't deserve to die. None of you did. Then Setsuna, she was thrown out into space.  
  
Space is a lonely oblivion but I never knew it would feel like this. Upon an inhabited colony and all our friends are dead. Rei's waiting patiently for me and Wufei's back at home. Home. It's not our home but it might as well be. We have no place left to go. No friends, even close acquaintances you had have perished in the same scent of blood. Please, watch over us, I don't want us to die.  
  
I can't just give up on the world in hopes that I'll be brought on to Utopia. I can't let anyone win. They see no connection, but I do. From the death of our princess until today. I believe every crime was by the same murderous hands. A pair of tainted hands that felt you no longer deserved to live. It's getting late though and the rain as yet to stop.  
  
The rain that has fallen for two months now. Wasted water in a lively colony that we could not find peace in. I hate to leave here but my body is feeling cold. And I'm sure Rei is tired of waiting. But I can't face her just yet. Not yet because I have a few more tears left for you. I can feel she's here though, I know she hasn't gone, steadfast she remains, forever a few steps behind me. A few steps to give me room to grow.  
  
And I sigh to the game of life. "Rei-chan, why had everyone died?" I ask her like I do every night.  
  
"Because it was time to go." Her usual response, I believe she says it to comfort her soul.  
  
"You have changed Rei-chan. Today you've dressed in black." A new change in her clothes.  
  
"This morning the color seemed fitting." Her common response.  
  
She has changed but I know I have too. We don't dress in black, it's not how we move to mourn. But today, that's how she dressed. Her clothes baggy and dark. Her long raven hair tied in a tight braid, the hair she ripped in frustration. If I weren't too lonely to think it, I'd say they were once Duo's clothes. Life has its ways I guess.  
  
It's ways of forcing us to continue even as we change on harder times. Change to a negative embodiment of our former selves. The selves that existed centuries ago. But maybe I should leave before I start to cry once more. I'm tired of crying and suffering, all I want is to walk away.  
  
"Minako-chan." Rei's voice seems so different, lacking that venomous bite that she once held so well. Consumed by Misery.  
  
"Hai."  
  
Echoing through the cemetery, five shots ring.  
  
FIN~  
  
**************************************************************************** **********  
  
Tell me what you thought and also read the other chapters if you haven't yet. But you don't have too.  
  
I may write the final act soon though I wrote this nearly four months ago.  
  
'Tunks 


End file.
